As essential as it is for any business, marketing is quite the challenge because there is no universal formula for success. At the very least, though, you should have a clear idea of who your target customers are, what they need, and what they want. With this in mind, your accountant in Billings, MT explains 5 simple marketing tips that can help boost sales for your small business.

 

Be Active on Social Media

If social media has yet to be part of your business, then you are missing out. Get on it right away and create accounts on popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Then comes the hard part; coming up with quality content that will continually engage your target audience and keep them coming back to your page. Don’t just post about your products as this will make it seem like your page is purely an advertising channel. Include posts about useful tips and hacks, best practices, interesting top 10 lists, and tutorial videos. If there are comments and questions, respond accordingly so your readers will feel that they are important to you. Strive to inform, entertain, and interact. Make sure also that your content is relevant in some way to your customers, as well as your brand, otherwise, you’re just wasting time and effort.

Establish Community Presence

Business should not always have to be all about profit. Let your customers know that you embrace this philosophy by giving back to the community. Participate in local events, sponsor local contests by providing your products and services as prizes, donate to charity, do volunteer work. The more involved you get, the more you’ll become recognizable as an organization that cares about more than just making money.

Advertise Relentlessly – Day and Night

All materials related to your business should show your website name. This includes your business cards, posters, flyers, banners, brochures, signs, delivery vehicles, and all other advertising materials. Go further by having clothing items (shirts, jackets, caps) branded with your logo and company name. Distribute and encourage everyone in the organization to wear these as often as they can to help improve awareness of your brand. You might also want to have stickers made to put on your car, or even on your kids’ bikes. Additionally, make use of the power of search engines to make it easier for customers to find you. There are a number of search engines out there – register your website to as many as you can, and use search engine optimization techniques.

Reward Loyal Customers

It’s been said that the second sell is more important than the first sell simply because it implies that the customer was satisfied with the purchase and is well on the way to becoming a regular buyer of that product or service. It is not enough, though, that the customer remains satisfied. You need to go one step further and make sure they know that their loyalty is appreciated, and that you are always working on maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship. One sure way to achieve this is through an incentive program. By continuing to buy from you, as well as referring and endorsing your products to family, friends, colleagues or associates — your existing customers get to receive discounts, rebates, special deals, and other gifts.  

Repeat What Works and Improve on It

Analyze what’s been bringing in more sales and conversions. Once you find out which strategy or strategies are working best, focus on these, and find ways for improvement.

Let Practical Taxes Help with Marketing Tips

We can’t offer to do your marketing, but we can offer marketing tips, and we can take your mind off other things. If every two weeks you are slogging through your payroll, let us take that burden off you. If you are sitting down every spring and spending hours and hours on your taxes, you need to stop! We can free up those hours where you can be more invested in your business.

Practical Taxes offers affordable tax preparation services, as well as many other accounting products, to the Billings, Montana community. Give us a call at 406-894-2050 to learn how we can help you.

 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government organization that was implemented by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, has a ton of great information to help the consumer avoid becoming the victim of fraud. That is great as long as people know where to go to get the information that they need. But most people have not been well educated, and they can become the victim of financial fraud even though they take great care to protect themselves. Fortunately the CFPB does more than just provide information.

 

The CFPB is There For You

The CFPB is a resource for the people. Since the financial industry is so big, including investments, savings, loans, credit cards, and mortgages, there was a surprising lack of oversight. The idea was to regulate the entire financial services industry with one organization. While their role has changed a little over the years, the CFPB is still there to help the little guy.

Since finances are so big, and intrinsically involve so much money, there is also a lot of fraud and scamming that occurs. There will always be unscrupulous people who would rather swindle hard working people out of their money instead of working hard themselves. The CFPB was designed to help put a stop to financial fraud.

But it isn’t just scam artists that are being hunted down by the bureau. Big companies have a way of bilking their clients out of money as well. Credit cards with hidden fees, savings with unnecessary complications, loans with outrageous interest rates, and similar products exist. When a consumer feels that he or she has been swindled, they can turn to the CFPB for advocacy.

How the CFPB Works

When a person has a complaint about a financial services company, they can fill out the form on the complaint page of the bureau’s website. If you have a complaint, there are likely others that are in your situation that have also complained.

The CFPB will then launch an investigation to determine the validity of your complaint. They will look into the company that is being alleged of taking advantage of you, and determine if they need to have sanctions put in place.

But the ultimate goal is to have educated consumers and not entitled consumers. This department seeks to make sure that every American knows what they are getting into before signing up for anything. This helps to reduce their workload, take the stress of the individual, and keep the unscrupulous companies at bay.

Paying special attention to those that are at risk, such as Older Americans, Service members and Veterans, and Students, the CFPB has special programs designed just for those people. Every American deserves to have an advocate; those who have more needs deserve a stronger advocate.

Practical Taxes

As your accountant and payroll specialist in Billings, Montana, we strive to make your experience nothing but extraordinary. If you ever have a complaint about our services, we would urge you to contact us first for resolution. Our goal is to make you happy with our service!

We are a full service accounting firm, we do everything from tax preparation, to payroll services, to bank remediation. If you are a business owner we have consultation services available, and we can help you register your new business! Give us a call at 406-894-2050 to learn more.

The internet is littered with money tips. Just type it into Google and you will see that everyone has an opinion. Some are absolute rubbish, others are great, and some only apply to those who have a substantial income already. For the rest of us, however, we need some tips on how to save money doing the things that we are already doing. We don’t want to spend 3 hours making our own toilet paper in an effort to save a dollar, but we do want to trim the fat off the areas where we are wasting money. Your Billings, MT payroll services expert lays out 5 ways that you can cut costs without drastically changing your lifestyle.

Make Meal Plans

For some reason planning meals is hard. We all fall guilty to this, so there are a few ways that we can save a lot of time, and a lot of money, with a little planning ahead.

Making a meal plan is the easiest way to make sure that you stick to your shopping list. Each week buy only what is on your meal plan list, and avoid those impulse buys. This will help you spend less, have less food waste, and streamline your day.

Sometimes that’s a little too much, you are a busy professional after-all. You can sign up for a service, like that provided by emeals.com, for just a few dollars per month. It will give you the recipes, the shopping list, and help make life simpler.

Cut Your Utility Bill

You’re not going to become rich slashing your utility bill. But you will feel better with extra money in your bank account, and you will be helping the environment.

The easiest way to cut your bills is to upgrade your appliances. But that can be expensive. So start smaller. Upgrade your old incandescent light bulbs to CFL’s. Many people saw an immediate savings of $10 to $20 per month when they upgraded. If you already use CFL’s, make the switch to LED’s. They’re a bit pricey still, at about $5-$10 per bulb. But they last longer, use even less electricity, and have more functionality than a CFL.

Use Your Calendar

If you work for yourself, then you know the need to maximize your time. If you follow our blog, then you may remember some posts on the subject (like Eliminate, Delegate, Simplify).

The truth is that many people seem to neglect their calendar. They have a basic idea of what they need to get done during the day, but they tend to just haphazardly prioritize. Instead, fill that calendar up. Mark down that for the first hour of the day you will respond to emails. Then close your email system until the last hour of the day when you follow up. Set a specific time limit for each task, and when the time is up, you move on. Doing so will help you get more done, and ultimately make more money.

 Trip Planning

Planning out your trip in advance, especially for a longer vacation, can mean a difference of hundreds of dollars. It will allow you to negotiate rates, find the best deals, and take advantage of freebies going on.

But trip planning doesn’t have to be a big ordeal. In fact, it can be as simple as maximizing your time while running errands. You will save gas, have more free time, be less likely to make impulse buys, and let you relax more. Schedule your errands on your calendar, and make a route so you hit each store in succession.

 

Practical Taxes

Here at Practical Taxes, we know that you want to save the most money. Follow these money tips, and when tax season comes around next year, you can save money by letting us prepare your taxes for you. No need to spend a ton of money at a seasonal preparer when you can have a professional that is available all year round helps you with your taxes. Give us a call at 406-894-2050 to learn how we can help you.

When you have an office to build, don’t waste your time trying to learn accounting.

As a business owner, you need an accountant. But if you are just getting started, you may not want to have to deal with the costs that come with hiring someone to do something that you feel you can do on your own. So what do you do? Do you suck it up and spend a little bit of money, or do you suck it up and spend extra time learning how to do it all yourself? If you ask around to all of the successful entrepreneurs out there, you will find they all say the same thing: hire an accountant. Your accountant in Billings, MT outlines 4 great reasons to use an accountant rather than do it yourself.

 

 

 

An Accountant Can Help You Determine Business Structure

Before you even begin your journey as an entrepreneur, you need to determine what the best business structure is for you. We talked about this a few months ago, so rather than repeat everything just go back and read about how to determine the proper business structure.

What it boils down to is this: what type of business are you starting, how big do you expect the business to grow in the next few years, how many employees will you end up having, and what your tax goals are. If you can answer those questions, your accountant can help you set up the right business for you.

An Accountant will Save You a LOT of Time

Starting a business takes a lot of work. Most of that work will be done by you in order to make sure that everything is moving along nicely and that everything is organized properly. Throw some employees into the mix and now you have to manage the business as well as manage your employees. That includes setting schedules, performance evaluations, dealing with unhappy employees, and payroll.

But if you have an accountant, you can alleviate a lot of that burden. Your accountant in Billings, Montana can handle the payroll, bookkeeping, and manage all of your finances for you. There’s no need to go with Quickbooks or a similar program when you have a real live person that can do it all. This frees you up to do what you do best: run a business. Read about how using a payroll service will actually save you money.

An Accountant will Prepare Your Taxes

Naturally when people think of an accountant, they think of someone to prepare their taxes. Your accountant can do that, but when you become a business owner, it is more important than you think.

With a business in place, your taxes now become harder than ever to get in place. You have to make sure that you are deducting the right amounts, putting incomes in the right places, filing on time (business taxes are due March 15), and making sure everything is done correctly. Why learn accounting when you have a business to run?

Your Accountant can Maintain Records

Most people that become business owners are fairly well organized. If they aren’t, then they end up going out of business. However, sometimes things get a little sloppy because there are just so many things to do.

You have two options here. You can hire a personal organizer to come in and develop a plan for you. After that you do all the work and keep your own records. Or you can hire an accountant to take over. You pass along the proper information (hours worked, pay structures, cash in, cash out, etc), and then your accountant in Billings, Montana can handle all of that record keeping for you.

Practical Taxes

As a full service accounting firm in Billings, MT, we can handle all of your accounting needs. The bottom line is that we can save you a lot of time by taking these things off your plate. In the end, you get to focus on what you know best (and what you love), and you don’t have to worry about the things you don’t know that only slow you down. Give us a call at 406-894-2050 to learn more about how we can help your business succeed.

Every business needs to get their name out there. Without visibility you don’t have clients. Without clients you don’t have an income. Without an income, well why are you even in business in the first place? The business world is constantly changing. And you need to stay on top of things or else you will be left with nothing but Yellow Pages ads in a world where Google search engine rankings are all that anyone cares about. If you want to maintain a viable player in your field, follow these tips set forth by your accountant in Billings, MT.

 

 

 

Becoming More Visible as a Business

There are a number of different ways to spread your name around. They are more than just advertising, and you can’t just pick one. You need to keep at the top of your game across multiple methods. Here are a few that have great success.

Google – There are two ways to get to the top of Google. You can pay for an AdWords campaign to put your website at the top of the list when people search for specific keywords. Most of the time people skip right by these ads. The alternative is to organically build your site to be search engine optimized. This includes a lot of content, and some other SEO techniques.

Pay Per Click – You need exposure. One way to do that is to set up a pay-per-click ad campaign targeting local site. Your local news sites will host your ad, but you only ever pay if someone actually clicks on your ad. This drives traffic to you website, and hopefully results in paying clients. You need a great website to convert those visitors to clients.

Media – Many businesses will benefit immensely from media advertising. This is printed ads in the paper, radio spots, TV commercials, and more. These ads are not for everyone, but they can benefit certain businesses immensely.

Networking – One word that many professionals hate is networking. But if you get into the right networking group, you will be rewarded greatly. For instance, Biz to Biz is a fantastic way to generate leads and pass referrals.

Partnering – Some businesses will benefit greatly by partnering with related businesses. For instance, if you are a graphic designer, you may benefit by partnering with a marketing company. You take your information to that company, and the next time they have overflow work, they push it your way. It’s a win-win for both of you.

Online Reviews –Something under-utilized, especially here in Billings, are Google reviews. Every time you have a satisfied customer, give them a card with your information and ask them to write a review for you on Google. You can offer small bribes such as a free coffee to a local kiosk to get a better response rate.

Outsourcing the Right Parts of your Business

Because you are a busy professional, you likely don’t want to take the time to make sure that your business is getting the right visibility. This is where it is important to outsource certain aspects. For instance, how many hours per month do you spend on payroll services? That is something your accountant in Billings, MT can do so you can focus on running your business. Outsourcing your marketing to the professionals is not only easier, but gets dramatically better results. A highly visible business is a profitable business. Where are you lacking?

Practical Taxes is a full service accounting firm in Billings, MT. If you need help with your bookkeeping, online payroll services, business consultation, or just simple tax preparation, we are here to help. Call us today at 406-894-2050 to learn more about how we can help you.